when the chickens came home to roost and other Key West homeless tourist attractions

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Nashville J sent yesterday:

This was in response to recent shooting including the homeless man they gunned down several weeks ago. Maybe this is what it is going to take with the Police killing on Thanksgiving Day. [Charles Eimer’s case in Key West]

People are waked up and taking action. Especially of interest to myself here, is the use of a “people’s warrant”. Although I do not see any place for any type of vigilante action, this really does show that people are not just sitting down and doing nothing… they are DOing, from their BEing.

“This is no longer your meeting, this is the people’s meeting,” protester David Correia, an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico, said into a commandeered microphone as shown in the KRQE video below. “We now serve a people’s warrant for arrest on Albuquerque Police Chief Gordon Eden.”

This type of action is incredibly heartening! As more and more people refuse to accept such brutality, we will begin to see some very real change.

These protests stem from a string of police involved shootings, and the subsequent Justice Department investigation.

“Officers used deadly force against people who posed a minimal threat, including individuals who posed a threat only to themselves or who were unarmed,” the report stated. “Officers also used deadly force in situations where the conduct of the officers heightened the danger and contributed to the need to use force.”
Protesters takeover Albuquerque City Council meeting

One can only hope, great idea, kudos to the Albuquerque folks who commandeered that city council meeting. Please send me any follow up you see online. Maybe it’s on me to try to get that to happen at a Key West city commission meeting, Thanks. Although, perhaps the first kamikazis should be Naja and Arnaud Girard, but for whom we may never have heard of Charles Eimers.

Later P.S.

Nap dreams left me with an impression the “High Court” wants me to do something a bit more bold than defer to Naja and Arnaud on an Albuquerque-ish uprising in Old City Hall. Am still waiting on more pieces to fall into place in my thoughts.

J replied:

Sloan:

I just find it really unbelievable that the Mayor – City Commission have said NOTHING. A visitor (suspected Homeless person living in his car according to the police) dies at the hands of the KWPD – there is a video that shows it and they are still wandering around trying not to comment on an on going investigation. That a clear cover up with having the former wife of a Captain on the KWPD investigate the issue – Chief Lee supporting the actions of his cops even after seeing the video taken by a citizen of the incident. How can Chief Lee not have the police officers involved on administrative leave – they clearly LIED about what happened – yet they are still at large covering up and probably trying to intimidate as many of those who saw it as possible.

I guess the good thing is that with the lawsuit – discovery will drag a lot of the lies and statements out of the KWPD. The autopsy may finally even be released. Hopefully the family also sued each individual officer involved – along with the KWPD – they may get the truth from someone if they did.

If citizens don’t demand accountability – NOTHING will happen it appears. At least some people in NM are tired of the out of control police in their city and are MADDER THAN HELL AND THEY ARE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE.

If not for Naja and Arnaud in The BluePaper staying on top of it – this killing would have been completely swept under the rug long ago. Of course you get credit for keeping it going in your blog – so well done to you all for not letting the KWPD get away with it.

and City Commissioners have condoned the whole thing. Margaret Romero, too.This would be easier for me to address, if I were not running against Craig and Margaret, for then there would not appear to be anything in it for me. That’s part of why I wrote yesterday that I felt the blue paper should do it; the other part was it is their story, they broke and developed it.Now, I feel, they should tell their readers, who are unhappy with how their city government has dealt with the case, to vote the entire lot of them out of office, and to not vote for Margaret Romero, either.

F

From past conversations with Naja and Arnaud,

I know they don’t like to get involved in local elections. They didn’t even want to get involved in police issues. Based on that, I don’t see Naja and Arnaud taking a position in the mayor’s race, which is the only city election this year.Nor do I see the Citizen or any other local news publication taking the position that Mayor Cates and Margaret Romero should lose at the polls because of their condoning what happened to Charles Eimers and how the KWPD dealt with it afterward.

That leaves me, the other candidate, to say it:

Something truly important came up, something really hot, and they ducked it completely. But they have plenty to say about what is trivia, by comparison. They ducked it, of course, because they know they are why it happened: the city police were simply following orders from the top to make homeless people’s lives miserable, and they suspected Charles Eimers of being homeless, so here we are.

That’s where I am right now.

Sloan

J wrote:

Morning Sloan:

I do understand – I’m sure some people have already figured out that they are not safe from the Crooks and they are not safe from the KWPD.

Maybe you can just put up a counter for each day that nothing is done about the killing of a tourist on Thanksgiving Day – for how long there is no autopsy – there is no external report – there are no suspensions of KWPD personnel involved in the killing. That counter would be FIVE MONTHS and XX number of DAYS and still counting.

Wonder how long it would have taken the KWPD to find the killer(s) if it had been a KWPD officer who had been jumped by a group of tourist (homeless)l and held face down in the sand until he died??? Bet there would have been heaps of comments from elected officials then – there would have been lots of interviews of witnesses – there would have been an autopsy by now released – there would be people behind bars. BUT, because it was the KWPD who jumped and held the mans face in the sand – we got nothing – nada- zero – zilch. Not a single one involved in the take down on the beach is fired-suspended. No problem that they all LIED about what happened – the Chief supports them.

J

I replied:

Yes, if it had been a homeless man who killed a KWPD officer, we would never have heard the end of it.The mayor and city commissioners ducked it, of course, because they know they are why it happened: the city police were simply following orders from the top to make homeless people’s lives miserable, and they suspected Charles Eimers of being homeless, so here we are.

Bob Kelly, of Key West, sent yesterday:

Was listening to things in my iTunes library this morning and this came around. Maybe you know it?

New Stanzas for Amazing Grace
BY ALLEN GINSBERG

I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place
Where I was lost alone
Folk looked right through me into space
And passed with eyes of stone

O homeless hand on many a street
Accept this change from me
A friendly smile or word is sweet
As fearless charity

Woe workingman who hears the cry
And cannot spare a dime
Nor look into a homeless eye
Afraid to give the time

So rich or poor no gold to talk
A smile on your face
The homeless ones where you may walk
Receive amazing grace

I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place
Where I was lost alone
Folk looked right through me into space
And passed with eyes of stone?

Kurt Wagner sent yesterday:

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. Since Key West hates homeless people, why not send them to the USVI? Plenty of soup kitchens, healthy food grows on trees all over the island, (oranges, limes, lemons, soursop, mangos, grapefruit, etc) Fishing is way better than Key West. The ocean is unbelievably clean (No MRSA) There are no open container laws, (beer, wine, and liquor is way cheaper) You would be hard pressed to walk more than 1/2 mile for your next drink. Cigarettes are cheaper. You get more in food stamps. It’s a dope smokers paradise. The beaches are open 24/7. You can sleep anywhere. The temp rarely, if ever, gets under 70 degrees. The bus’s that run all over the island cost $1, free if you’re 60 or over.

The locals are the friendliest people I have ever met, (unlike the “elite” in Key West) NO one judges others. The guy who lives in a shack also owns a $40,000 fishing boat.

I only see two bad things for the homeless. 1) you can’t ride a bike in the mountains, 2) if you’re a racist, stay away, only 17% is white.

Kurt Wagner

St. Thomas, USVI

I replied:

And you keep saying you want to return to Key West and be a vicious van dweller criminal again???

I’d like to reply in kind, but Kathy texted me yesterday that her mother died. We’ve called it dementia for a couple of years, but Alzheimer’s by any other name…

I’m packing my truck for going to WPB and every few minutes, Kathy requests I bring something else. I need to say this before jumping and running–

I honestly have never considered that you are an ambulatory schitz. I fit the description better than you. I jest, but it is true…my mother was from Chicago; my dad from rural agrarian Georgia. They were married at ages 16 and 18. Part of me has been drawn to the light hearted folks that fish for catfish and bream by the side of the (dirt) road, and another part was restlessly adapted to academia where I was relatively free to think and act within acceptable parameters…though I was seen as a cross between Caesar Chavez and a broke Howard Hughes.

I’ve gotta go, but back to you– As a brother, I have wanted to say, “Care beware” as we learned at frat house. Being a KA has parallels. Stereotypes are easily applied and hard to avoid. We are not racists, nor dumb Southern alcoholic white trash, but we have given the Rebel yell by association. It is Robert E. Lee who we represent, brave, loyal, principled, surrendered, but not defeated as a man.

I have said to you before, if you make the stereotypes less easily applied, you could get elected and do more good than from rants. Angels don’t need credit, nor do I hope they want credit for directing you. Most folks are more interested in your ideas that your credit to your motivational sources. To reduce the amplitude of your dreams and credit to your angels is not giving up your soul, it is only a means to avoid being misinterpreted and being heard, instead.

I’ve gotta go, but consider–by giving all credit to Angels’ advice, you avoid responsibility for what transpires. If the angels are ignored, you were only the messenger.

…and please abandon the idea if “making KW a solar city.” That appeals only to those who don’t know solar…and that includes you, unless you present it with more understanding. During the NNK electrical fiasco, those who knew little to nothing bought the idea that stand alone solar was a good thing. It is not. I was forced to live with it for over 15 years by those who knew not of what they spoke. Care beware, brother. A person who is his own lawyer has a fool for a lawyer. A candidate wi is his own campaign manager is doomed to take or defect the hits. Deflecting is not what the angels want.

I gotta go!!Sent from my iPhone

I replied:

Condolences, your mother-in-law. My father’s brother Leo, whom I loved dearly, had Alzheimer’s; I burst into tears over it and was glad for him when news finally came that he had passed over.

As a boy, I viewed Leo as the greatest fisherman in the world; I learned from him how to use artificial bait, bait-cast, then spin-cast. He never was into fly-fishing, which I came to really enjoy.

I can relate to fishing for bream and catfish, used to be really important to me. The only bream I know around these parts are in your neck of the woods, the Blue Hole on Big Pine Key. Don’t imagine the park rangers would cotton to us poaching those blue gills for a fish fry.

You got me trying to imagine how it might have gone if I had showed up in Key West in late 2000 and started living on the street and never said a word about where I’d come from, or what I did before arriving here, or about dreams, visions, angels, God, etc. What if I had played complete mystery man? If I had stuck with my name at that time, Sloan Young, maybe nobody ever would have penetrated the mystery. Maybe I would have gotten elected to something simply because people liked how I thought and what I said about local issues. It didn’t go that way, of course. But if it had gone that way, I’d have felt like a big fat fraud because I was taking a lot more credit to myself than I knew was due.

When I was a Kappa Alpha at Vanderbilt, the Rebel yell thing was a pretty big deal to me. Robert E. Lee was a distant nobleman some day to aspire to be like; right then, though, I was just trying to have as a good a time as possible. God, in the KA Dieu es le Dames creed, was so far, far away that I could only contemplate some day contemplating “Him”. Women, I had no trouble contemplating.

As time passed, and my life didn’t go anywhere near like I had hoped it would go when I was at Vanderbilt, and later in law school at Alabama; as I sunk deeper and deeper into pain and misery; as, finally, after trying just about everything but God to right my sunk ship, I turned there and asked for help … The rest, as they say, is history, which I have told many times in various ways.

The angels still like solar; maybe they know something about it, which has not yet been discovered. I never did like the big lead battery banks people on No Name Key used. Some members of the pro-electrify No Name camp kept talking about connecting to the Keys Energy grid and selling their surplus sun time solar energy back to Keys Energy, and using Keys Energy electricity at other times.

I heard some of those folks, after getting on Keys Energy’s grid, had their solar panels removed. I think I heard Brad and Beth Vickrey were the first to do that. I still wonder why they even bought a home on No Name, when they could have bought a home on the grid on Big Pine. I still wonder that about everyone who bought a home on No Name, who wanted Keys Energy power.

It won’t surprise me to wake up one morning and read in the Citizen that Brad and Beth, or somebodies, are proposing a new residential development on No Name to the Monroe County Government. I didn’t need angels to put that idea into my noggin’. But it was angels who brought me all the way from Colorado and put me on No Name Key Bridge in early January 1995, and made a covenant with me that I would be used to try to protect that part of the Keys, since I loved it so much.

If people don’t want to vote for someone who says angels steer and correct him, that’s their problem. My problem is doing everything possible to please the angels, having experienced in spades what it’s like when I displease them.

Maybe people only think angels should be talked about in church. Maybe people get afraid when they hear somebody say his life has been commandeered by angels; maybe they fear the same could happen to them. There are stories in the Bible of that happening to people.

Maybe the angels want people to know there is another way to live. Maybe the angels want people to consider that other way because the way people live today is not working, as is seen on TV news reports every day and night.

Maybe the angels want people to consider that angels are not archetypes, nor is Evil, nor is God; that they are just as real, more real, actually, than are people, who basically are projections out of spirit beings and groups into human bodies on his planet, among other places.

The thing about my father’s brother Leo, which most bugged my father, and lots of other people at times, was he called a spade a spade; he didn’t know any other way.

Sloan

In Mayor Cates’ shoes, I would not have needed angels to tell me to contact the US Department of Justice and the F.B.I. after I saw the bystander’s video of how my police actually did apprehend Charles Eimers, which video the blue paper kindly provided in its reporting of that case – the video totally contradicted the KWPD’s version of what happened.

Here’s a link to the most recent blue paper article on the Eimers case:

The article contains links to the video and to all prior blue paper articles on that case.

I’m glad I’m not in Mayor Cates and Margaret Romero’s shoes. Not because of the voters, but because of the angels, who are why the blue paper got the bystander’s video, and who are why Charles Eimers’ body was not cremated, and who are looking dead at Mayor Cates and Margaret Romero and the six city commissioners for ducking what they ought not to have ducked.

Political advertisement paid for and approved by Sloan Bashinsky, for Mayor of Key West

About Sloan

Darn, that would take a while. Try the autobiographical pages in the header. Ditto for header menu pages at www.goodmorningbirmingham.com. Hatched and raised there, eventually I ran away from home.
Here's a short list: Born 1942; male; single; accused of all sorts of imaginable and unimaginable things, perhaps some true. Live on Key West of Weird asteroid. Publish something most days on this website, been at that since July 2007. That's heaps of catch-up reading, probably not recommended.